Giving Tuesday 2025

MedChi's Museum and Archives are an important part of MedChi’s 226 year history, and play a vital role in the history of medicine, both in Maryland and around the world

MedChi recently received a challenge grant in the amount of $50,000 to support the History of Medicine in Maryland and everything that the program does. Over the past year, the Office of the History of Maryland Medicine has accomplished the following:

• Moved the rare book collection from the stacks, which were not climate controlled. The books are now in the rare book room, and have been catalogued, so we have a current catalogue of what is in our collection. 
• Set up social media accounts, including the MedChi Archives Blog, YouTube and Instagram to highlight MedChi’s history, and the vast number of items in our collections.
• Sourced donations to the Museum, including an 1845 painting of Founder, Tristram Thomas, on permanent loan from the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine Alumni Office. This painting measures 8’ x 5.5’.
• Secured items for the rare book collections, including a set of fifty 1813 French medical dictionaries, a 1925 second impression of Cushing’s Osler book and four Osler books,  including a limited 1926 edition of the “Osler Number.” 
• Reached out to the community through events including open houses, ghost tours, lectures at local colleges, women’s history month symposia, and more. 
• Catalogued thousands of photographs and scans so that anyone who accesses them in the future will know who, what, when, and where. 
• Met with colleagues in medical history, archives, and adjacent fields, and conducted tours with curators of local museums, historic houses, and archives. 
• Spoke at the annual American Osler Society’s conferences. The Director is now a Fellow of the American Osler Society.
• Wrote a biography of Marcia Crocker Noyes, an acolyte of Sir William Osler, who shaped the organization that MedChi is today.

However, historic preservation is not a job we can do by ourselves, and we need your financial help to support the continued care of these archival and museum pieces. At times over the past decades, our history has not played an important role at MedChi, and when we’ve searched through the archives, studied our paintings, and looked at our rare books, we’ve been dismayed to find that they’ve suffered the damage of the aging process. For the past ten years, we have worked to ensure that this no longer happens.

Please click here to match our generous challenge grant and support the work preserving the MedChi Museum and Archives.

Thank you very much!

 
Meg Fairfax Fielding
Director of the History of Maryland Medicine